O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry
Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively;
And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh Courts are but only superficial schools
Yet whilst with sorrow here we live opprest,
What life is best?
Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray;
Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane,
With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain;
And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in aste,
Hieing away to the home of her rest,
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men :
And where's a city from foul vice so free,
But may be term'd the worst of all the three ?
Where she and her mate have scooped their Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,
What is it, then, to have or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife?
Where the white man's foot hath never passed,
And the quivered Coranna or Bechuan
Hath rarely crossed with his roving clan,
A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man hath abandoned from famine and To cross the seas to any foreign soil,
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save poisonous thorns that pierce the foot;
And the bitter-melon, for food and drink,
Is the pilgrim's fare by the salt lake's brink;
A region of drought, where no river glides,
Nor rippling brook with osiered sides ;
Where sedgy pool, nor bubbling fount,
Nor tree, nor cloud, nor misty mount,
Appears, to refresh the aching eye;
But the barren earth and the burning sky,
And the blank horizon, round and round,
Spread, -void of living sight or sound.
And here, while the night-winds round me sigh,
And the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,
As I sit apart by the desert stone,
Like Elijah at Horeb's cave, alone,
"A still small voice" comes through the wild
(Like a father consoling his fretful child),
Which banishes bitterness, wrath, and fear,
Saying, Man is distant, but God is near!
THE World's a bubble, and the Life of Man
In his conception wretched, from the womb,
So to the tomb;
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
With cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns on water, or but writes in dust.
Our own affection still at home to please
Is a disease:
SAMSON ON HIS BLINDNESS.
FROM "SAMSON AGONISTES."
O Loss of sight, of thee I most complain !
Blind among enemies, O, worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annulled, which might in part my grief have
eased.
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own ;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!
THE DEPARTURE FROM PARADISE.
IN either hand the hastening angel caught
Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappeared.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them
soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and
slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
O UNEXPECTED stroke, worse than of death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil! these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of gods; where I had hope to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both? O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation, and my last
At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names!
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Thee, lastly, nuptial bower! by me adorned
With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure
And wild? how shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?
WITH Sorrow and heart's distress Wearied, I fell asleep. But now lead on ; In me is no delay; with thee to go, Is to stay here; without thee here to stay, Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me Art all things under heaven, all places thou, Who for my wilful crime art banished hence. This further consolation, yet secure, I carry hence; though all by me is lost, Such favor I unworthy am vouchsafed, By me the promised Seed shall all restore.
FROM "HENRY VIII.," ACT III. SC. 2.
FAREWELL, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ;
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a ripening - nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory;
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me; and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye :
I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have:
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
WOLSEY'S ADVICE TO CROMWELL.
FROM "HENRY VIII.," ACT 111. SC. 2.
CROMWELL, I did not think to shed a tear
In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me,
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.
Let's dry our eyes; and thus far hear me, Crom-
well;
And when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull, cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of— say, I taught thee, Say, Wolsey that once trod the ways of glory, And sounded all the depths and shoals of honorFound thee a way, out of his wreck; to rise in ; A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it. Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me. Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't? Love thyself last cherish those hearts that hate
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not :
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O
Cromwell!
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr.
Serve the king; and pr'ythee, lead me in :
There take an inventory of all I have,
To the last penny; 't is the king's my robe,
And my integrity to heaven, is all
I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies!
SHE stood alone amidst the April fields,
Brown, sodden fields, all desolate and bare. "The spring is late," she said, "the faithless spring,
That should have come to make the meadows fair.
"Their sweet South left too soon, among the trees
The birds, bewildered, flutter to and fro; For them no green boughs wait, - their memories Of last year's April had deceived them so."
She watched the homeless birds, the slow, sad spring,
The barren fields, and shivering, naked trees. "Thus God has dealt with me, his child," she
"I wait my spring-time, and am cold like these.
"To them will come the fulness of their time;
CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HOUSE.
WAVE after wave of greenness rolling down
Their spring, though late, will make the mead-From mountain top to base, a whispering sea
Of affluent leaves through which the viewless
THERE is such power even in smallest things
To bring the dear past back; a flower's tint,
A snatch of some old song, the fleeting glint
Of sunbeams on the wave- each vivid brings
The lost days up, as from the idle strings
Of wind-harp sad a breeze evokes the hint
Of antique tunes. A glove which keeps imprint
Of a loved hand the heart with torture wrings.
By memory of a clasp meant more than speech;
A face seen in the crowd with curve of cheek Or sweep of eyelash our woe's core can reach.
How strong is love to yearn, and yet how weak
To strive with fate: the lesson all things teach,
As of the past in myriad ways they speak.
LIFE, like a romping school-boy full of glee,
Doth bear us on his shoulders for a time:
There is no path too steep for him to climb,
With strong lithe limbs, as agile and as free
As some young roe, he speeds by vale and sea,
By flowery mead, by mountain-peak sublime,
And all the world seems motion set to rhyme,
Till, tired out, he cries, "Now carry me!"
In vain we murmur. "Come," Life says, "Fair play," And seizes on us. God! He goads us so.
He does not let us sit down all the day.
At each new step we feel the burden grow,
Till our bent backs seem breaking as we go,
Watching for Death to meet us on the way.
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